How to Cheat Your Own Death

In the present day, Annie Adams is at Gravesdown Hall in Castle Knoll, England, trying to break into a filing cabinet in her late great-aunt Frances Adams’s “murder room.” Annie inherited Gravesdown Hall from Frances, and she has been uncovering all the secrets that Frances collected and stored in her filing cabinets. Her urgency is driven by the fortune given to her by the late Peony Lane, the local seer, which warns, “Without its beating heart, your family will fall one by one” (7). 

A call from Annie’s mother, Laura Adams, has heightened her concern; Laura, an artist, has taken on a new apprentice, Felicity “Fliss” Rowe, who is from Castle Knoll. Her mother has never shown interest in having an apprentice before. When Annie’s friends Archie Foyle and his granddaughter Beth stop by, she learns that Fliss is Detective Rowan Crane’s ex-girlfriend, and she allegedly broke his heart and stole money from his family years ago. Annie, who has helped Crane solve two cases now, is dismayed to learn this, as she’s developing an attraction to him and hopes that it’s reciprocated. 

Annie finally gets the filing-cabinet drawer open and finds a small, early painting by her mother depicting a human heart. Just then, her mother texts her a photo of a bloody organ, possibly an animal’s heart, left on her doorstep. Convinced that the events are connected, and remembering her fortune about a “beating heart,” Annie decides to go to London.

The narrative shifts to a passage from Frances’s diary from September 20, 1968. She arrives a week late from Castle Knoll to register for her psychology course at University College London. The stern office manager is dismissive of Frances because of her working-class background until a kind faculty member, Professor Dane, intervenes. He notices that Frances has been assigned only to courses related to child psychology—a likely gender-based prejudice—and offers to change her schedule. He enrolls her in his own advanced lecture, “Understanding the Homicidal Mind” (20). Though Frances came to London to escape the subject of murder (the topic of the previous two novels in the series), she accepts, realizing that she can’t outrun her own interests.

Now, Annie arrives at her mother’s Chelsea home after receiving the text about the bloody object on the doorstep. She hesitates to enter, knowing that her estranged con-man father, Sam Arlington, is back in Laura’s life. Inside, Laura dismisses the bloody object as prey left by a fox and is evasive when Annie asks about Fliss. 

When Annie goes to the alley to take out the trash, she discovers Fliss’s body in a dumpster. Fliss is dead, with a large wound in her chest where her heart should be. The body is lying on top of a pile of Laura’s paintings, which have been wrapped in trash bags.

In 1968, Frances attends Professor Dane’s popular lecture on the homicidal mind. A charismatic but arrogant student, Max Torrence, sits beside her, reads her private notes, and then poses her written question as his own. Outraged, Frances publicly retaliates by making a clever counterargument about the role of power and entitlement in murder, implicitly shaming Max. 

After class, another student, Elaine Cook, commends Frances for challenging Max. Elaine reveals that she used to date Max, who is the son of the department head and the heir of an affluent family. She warns Frances that he has a habit of seeking revenge on anyone who wrongs him. As Frances walks outside, she sees a blond woman lean out of an expensive car and call to Max. Elaine tells Frances that it’s Max’s sister, Vera Huntington, a socialite their age who’s married to a heart surgeon.

By mid-October 1968, Frances has settled into London life, working as a waitress at a trendy Soho diner and becoming close friends with Elaine, her neighbor at the women’s boardinghouse. Their friendship becomes strained when Elaine gets back together with Max. Frances notices that Elaine is snobbish, implying that she’s somehow better than Frances. 

One day, Elaine and Vera visit Frances at work and invite her to a private art auction. Elaine stipulates that she must bring a “respectable” date, and Frances is annoyed by Elaine’s snobbery. To show Elaine up, Frances decides to invite her old, complicated flame Lord Rutherford “Ford” Gravesdown to accompany her.

In the present, after the police have finished their initial investigation at Laura’s house, Detective Crane arrives. He reveals that Fliss was his ex-girlfriend, and he feels guilty for her death. In the days prior, she had left him several urgent messages saying that she had “made a terrible mistake” (50), but he ignored them, assuming she was referencing their decade-old breakup. 

Annie tells him about the animal heart left on the doorstep and recalls a murder similar to Fliss’s from Frances’s diary, in which a socialite named Vera Huntington was found with her heart removed. Now believing that Fliss was genuinely asking for help, Crane is determined to investigate her murder. To get more information without further upsetting Laura, Annie calls Beth and asks her to look through Frances’s files for her father Sam’s phone number.

In 1968, Frances visits Ford Gravesdown, who is staying at his Chelsea townhouse rather than Gravesdown Hall (his Castle Knoll estate), to invite him to the art auction. She reflects on their past romance and her determination to build a life in London independent of him. Ford, perceptive as ever, intuits that her motives aren’t purely social. Frances admits that she wants to attend the party to better understand her new “powerful enemy,” Max Torrence. 

Upon hearing the names Max Torrence and Vera Huntington, Ford grows serious. He reveals that his father knew their father and confirms that the Torrence family is extremely wealthy and powerful. He praises Frances’s caution and agrees to be her date.

In the present, Annie and Crane meet Sam at an upscale Mayfair restaurant. Sam is unexpectedly candid and eager to discuss Fliss’s murder. He offers a new version of his and Laura’s past, claiming that their split wasn’t over a Ponzi scheme, as Annie has always been told. Instead, he says that he sold valuable items from Frances’s Chelsea house when Laura inherited it, making millions. According to Sam, when Laura found out, she gave the entire fortune away to “make it right” (72), bankrupting herself. 

Sam theorizes that Fliss knew this secret from her time in Castle Knoll and used it to blackmail her way into Laura’s life. He also suggests that Fliss may have turned on Laura and tried to destroy her career, giving Laura a motive for murder.

In 1968, Frances and Ford arrive at a lavish Knightsbridge home for the silent art auction. Vera Huntington greets Frances warmly, but Vera’s husband, Dr. Alasdair Huntington, a much older and pompous heart surgeon, is dismissive. Elaine is also present and behaves condescendingly toward Frances. She’s shocked when Frances introduces her date as Lord Ford Gravesdown. 

Vera leads Frances and Elaine to a private gallery to reveal a surprise: a large, nude painting of Elaine. It’s clear from Elaine’s horrified reaction that she had no knowledge of the painting’s existence. In shock, she throws her champagne glass at the canvas and flees the room.

In the present, after Sam leaves them with the restaurant bill, Annie and Crane regroup at a pub. Crane reveals that he has been officially warned to stay away from the investigation. They review the strange connections between Peony Lane’s fortune, the animal heart on the doorstep, and the 1968 Vera Huntington murder. Annie notes that Vera’s husband, Dr. Alistair Huntington, was imprisoned for murdering her but would now be 95 years old. Crane decides to pull Vera’s old case file to investigate a possible copycat killing. 

They both express skepticism about Sam’s story, and Annie suspects that if Laura did give away a fortune, she was likely pressured into it. They theorize that the valuable items that Sam stole belonged to the Gravesdown family. Crane agrees to investigate the history of Laura’s art sales, while Annie resolves to get the truth from her mother.

In 1968, Max Torrence enters the gallery and smugly confirms that the nude painting of Elaine is Vera’s work. He reveals that he commissioned it from a photograph as a cruel act of revenge for Elaine having broken up with him, and he plans to enter it into the auction. As he gloats, it becomes clear that Vera is acting under his coercion. Vera quietly warns Frances to stay close to Ford. 

In the hall, Frances finds Ford comforting a distraught Elaine and learns that he has devised a plan for her to seize control of the situation by proudly presenting herself as an artist’s model. After the auction, Ford reveals to Frances that he purchased the painting himself to thwart Max’s true plan: to have the painting bought by and displayed in the office of Elaine’s father’s boss.

In the present, Annie explores her mother’s empty Chelsea house. In the basement studio, she’s moved and impressed by Laura’s new series of paintings, which are powerful, abstract renderings of human hearts. 

Afterward, she decides to search Fliss’s guest room for clues. Tucked away inside a vintage red alligator handbag in the wardrobe, she discovers a collection of old medical records from the 1950s and 1960s. The files belong to about 20 different patients, and all are signed by the surgeon from Frances’s diary: Dr. Alasdair Huntington, Vera’s husband. At the back of the wardrobe, behind the coats, she also finds a large, haunting painting.